yeast cloning

[raildog]

I was wondering how many folks clone their whiskey yeast? I have good results cloning beer yeast, any thoughts?
I just bought some Prestige WD and am planning on doing an all grain mash on monday. The directions say not to make a starter. I always make a starter when brewing beer, but thats a liquid yeast. Any thoughts?
I also bought some of the Prestige Vodka yeast, upon reading the label I see its a turbo yeast, I was wanting to make a high quality all grain vodka, did I mess up buying this yeast? If so, what yeast should I be using.

[rad14701]

See this sticky in the novice section regarding better results with turbo yeast...

By cloning I'm going to assume that you are referring to allowing added time for the yeast to reproduce before adding it to the wash... I usually pitch dry yeast directly into my wash because the bakers yeast I use is consistently viable...

[eternalfrost]

ive always used simple bakers yeast in the past on sugar washes. just tossed it in straight from the pouch since its so cheap, pounds for a few bucks.

now ive just started messing with beer and all grain whiskeys and have been using "designer" yeasts from the beer companies. i find that for beer yeast makes a huge difference, in taste not performance. but for sugar washes that are going to get refluxed most any yeast works fine.

for my beer yeasts ive been making big starters of a few liters and piching some of it and saving the rest in the fridge for later batches. just cuz its so much more expensive.
just got a stirplate set up so should be able to make some massive starters soon

[raildog]

Rad,
By cloning I ment harvesting some of the yeast cells from the wash when I rack it into the kettle, from the bottom of the fermenter, then making a starter and pitching the harvested cells into this starter. i've been doing this for a while with my all grain beers and it works great as long as everything is kept very sanitary.

[rad14701]

Several members reuse their yeast over and over for many generations... Some store yeast for future use while others just toss a new wash in on top of the left over yeast in the bottom of the fermenter... You have company here as far as members who either crossed over from brewing beer or still brew beer along with making spirits...

[eternalfrost]

rum is the only thing i have had continuous batches of... i rack off and leave about 1/2 a gallon out of 5. then stir up all the crud off the bottom and pour off half into a pot and boil with the next sugar with some citric acid for the next batch for half an hour or so.

this inverts the new sugar and busts apart the dead yeast into usable nutrients for the next batch. also keeps the trub from building up and making a foot thick layer after a dozen generations.

[raildog]

I ordered these yeast after reading Ian Smiley's book 'Making pure corn Whiskey'. I thought I was on the right track, now I'm not so sure. I'd like to use a yeast that ferments down to below 1.000 to make up for the low gravity, 1.070 wash i plan on using.
I'd like to thank you all for this resource, man have I learned a lot. Ran my Bokabob this week using an old plum wine as a wash, hit 95% first time using it, wow I was floored.

[Kill-Devil]

Will the yeast eventually mutate if recycled batch to batch ? (vs. starting a separate mother - same idea as keeping a "mother plant" when cloning certain plants).

[rubber duck]

Will the yeast eventually mutate if recycled batch to batch ? (vs. starting a separate mother - same idea as keeping a "mother plant" when cloning certain plants).

I don't know if its a mutation but but after several generation yeast will adapted to the wort and even the batch size.
Yeast that has been used for 5 batches of rum won't work the same as the same yeast strain used in corn 5 times. You can kinda train yeast to a point. Yeast that has been used in a 500 gallon ferment doesn't work the same in a 5 gallon.

[rad14701]

Many distilleries and breweries propagate their own strains of yeast by reusing a colony until it adapts to a specific recipe... Some strains have been refined over decades and have become very predictable...

[Kill-Devil]

So for someone who always has a batch (of the same recipe) going, there is no need to buy new yeast?
Once yeast adapts to the conditions of a specific recipe and process, perhaps it makes sense to capture a starter and keep it in the fridge as a backup. Any special process for doing this? Just bottle up some of the trub?

thanks,
KD

[Kill-Devil]

Found an answer to my question about storing a starter on this thread:
http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... =39&t=5071

-KD

[Dnderhead]

you can just add new ingredients on top of trub/yeast, or you can save yeast for future use, if you want to save ,after racking off
the beer add clean water stir it up ,let it settle. the trub will settle on the bottom and the yeast will stay suspended longer. use a sterile jar and skim off the
yeast, refrigerate or you can take the next step if you want and wash the yeast .

washing is just adding sterile water stirring then place this in refrigerator about 1 hour to settle poring off the still cloudy top.
do as many times as you want. whatever you do keep it Clean.

[piratesteve]

So with this yeast "training". One should be able to push the yeast into higher %abv's over time as some that arent so resiliant will die, while some should survive. Then these will multiply and be the active ones in the next batch???

Im sure the tastes resulting at first from the initial pushes of higher abv will be a little off, but over time they should no longer be stressed??

Also, this same principle should work to allow yeasts that can thrive in cooler temps? like a lager yeast with a higher abv tolerance???

[Dnderhead]

to a extent, as you say there similar to plants, and will adapt , but if you push to hard/to fast or to much, there going to die.
Iv seen a experiment with ale yeast that got over 24% but it took months to do it. and when you git done the wash is not much good
because yeast start producing toxins when stressed. and that causes off flavors. witch whould make very bad wine or beer. and
when distilled you have to remove more heads/tails there for you do not gain anything.also high ABV ferments take a long time.
If you do a 12% wash it will finish in about week,,if you do a 20% wash it can take over a month.
if you wanted to something like that just for a experiment it whould be fine, but not much good for anything useful.

[piratesteve]

well, guess ill just play aroung with a few experiments with my washes.

Keep one batch new yeast. then another with the previous washes trub, and keep using the next generations trub. to see how they "learn" the wash.

Im liking doing experiments in this distilling hobby. as so far they all let me catch a buzz while learning.... I cant beleive how much this has gotten my brain going over the last 6 months. Science was always my favorite!

[guillermo]

I made up a starter the last time I did an all grain ferment. That way I only used a quarter of a packet of the Prestige Whiskey yeast which is expensive if you are doing large mashes and follow their recommendations. After I pitched the starter, I added some of the Mile High enzymes to help with conversion.

I'd like to know what yeast strain they use in the Prestige packet and what is a comparable dry yeast available in bulk that is cheaper.

[piratesteve]

In theory, you should be able to keep using the yeast left over after you rack of your wash. As long as it isnt a turb yeast, as ive heard they like to mutate quite easily. Re-using them will make them better suited to your mash if you are doing the same sized recipe over and over....

[dyethor]

When I worked At the brewery we would keep yeast strains going for different types of beer. Our fermentors were conical bottom. after cold crashing, all the yeast would fall to the bottom. The yeast would form layers the the bottom would be dead and slow yeast, the middle the good, active stuff, and the top would be the highly active. We would discard the bottom and top and only use the middle.
We would rack off the the beer from the top. Then we would pull all the dead and what we called "bad" yeast off. This would be the bottom layer, and a darker color than the good yeast, which was a lighter color and smoother consistency. Also through out the fermentation we would pull the"bad" yeast every few hours. This was to get the dead yeast out of the beer so it wouldn't leave any off flavors in the beer.
Then we would take what we thought to be the viable yeast and pull it off and put it into sanitized vessels for cold storage, 30-34 degrees Fahrenheit. it was usually stored for a week till the next brew. We would take a sample of that yeast before storrage, mix it with some dye, and put it onto a gridded slide, (sorry I forgot the technical names) and count the number of viable yeast cells under the microscope. The dye would stain the dead cells due to the membranes being torn or decayed. Most of the time we could get the viable yeast pulled off just by sight.
The top layer we would discard, our yeast expert (He had a doctorate in microbiology with his dissertation on yeast cells) said this yeast was too active and would die too fast and not impart the right flavor we wanted.
When the time came to use the yeast again we let it get up to room temp around 70-80degrees Fahrenheit and then pitch it. It would start doing its thing almost instantly, co2 would be coming off in under an hour. Oh yea forgot to mention this was all with 90bbl and bigger fermentors.
Yeast does adapt to what your doing with it. Keep it happy and healthy and it will give you great results.
I Know in distilling sanitation doesn't matter as much, but being as sanitary as possible will always leave you with happy results when trying to propagate yeast.

[piratesteve]

Well thanks for the Informative posting. The knowledge of the yeast layers settling is so simple, but would be easy to overlook. Just a bout to rack off some rum, and am going to do a side by side test with new yeast and my previous.

[scotty]

I just started saving the dregs from a starter bottle and refrigerating it for a week. After a week i mix up another 1000 ml of water with 3 oz of sugar and 1/4 tsp each of nutrient and energizer.
I have been doing this for 3 weeks just to see if it works.
This morning, i i mixed the 1000 ml of a working recycled starter bottle with 1000 ml of water with sugar and additives.
I'm using 1118 because i use it a lot with my wine making.

Soon i will try cloning it in petri dishes and preserving it in slants and stabs.((all recently gained vocabulary from a book))

http://www.midwestsupplies.com/first-st ... jotte.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

My goal is to learn the process so i can clone and preserve more specific/expensive yeasts.

The subject of mutation probably is a serious consideration in my present method of re using my yeast